Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Is he or isn't he? That is the question.

There is conflicting information on whether Sam Donaldson is on Ms. Palfrey's records. Ms. Palfrey claims Donaldson is not a client and Big Head DC stands behind their story. It may been a simply dialing the wrong number as Donaldson said. But, it does leave the question of the other prominent news caster on the phone record and if that is a wrong number... You judge for yourself.

(Radar mentioned the Bigheaddc story here.)

What he didn't report is that Palfrey told him, repeatedly, in no uncertain terms, that her single telephone call to Donaldson had nothing to do with prostitution.

Capriccioso found out about Donaldson's involvement from Radar. We were looking into the Donaldson rumor and stupidly asked Capriccioso, who claimed to have a relationship with Palfrey, to talk to her about it.
We decided not to pursue the item for reasons explained below, so he picked it up for himself without so much as a "thank you" or heads-up.

Palfrey told Capriccioso at the time—unequivocally—that Donaldson was not a client. She insisted to him that a female relative of Donaldson's—she thought her name was Ellen—had mixed up a digit when she gave Donaldson her number, and that the wrong number just happened to be Palfrey's. So every time Donaldson attempted to call Ellen, he unknowingly reached Palfrey's voicemail and left a message. Palfrey tired of the messages and called Donaldson back—once—to alert him to the error. This, Palfrey told Capriccioso, explains the single appearance of Donaldson's number in records of her outgoing phone calls. The explanation sounds preposterous to us, but it's what Palfrey told Capriccioso. Here's an e-mail he sent to a Radar editor reporting his conversation with her:

"After receiving many calls from Sam Donaldson leaving pleasantries for his releative [sic] on her personal cell number voicemail in the mid-2000s, Palfrey herself decided to give him a call to relay what she assumed to be a mistake. 'Would you please tell your relative to give out the correct phone number?' Palfrey recalls asking Donaldson. 'I was sick and tired of getting these phone calls from people all over Washington asking for his relative.' When she talked to Donaldson, he was immediately panicked and asked how she got his number (she says she didn't tell him that she ran an escort service). She explained the whole story to him about her receiving messages that were obviously not intending for her."

When Radar expressed skepticism, Capriccioso wrote back: "I pushed her hard on that—asked her if she had an affinity for Sam for some reason, and told her that many people would think it was such an odd coincidence that he dialed the wrong number ... she insisted that that was the truth."

The only parts of the above story that made it into Capriccioso's post are the parts about Palfrey confirming a call to Donaldson and Donaldson panicking at the call. The innocent explanation Palfrey offered apparently wasn't relevant.

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2007/11/donaldsons-digits-wrong-number.php#comments

1 comment:

airJackie said...

Well it will all come out in the wash. Many more people will say they dialed the wrong number.